UW-Madison, School of Medicine and Public Health, Dean and Vice Chancellor for Medical Affairs

The University of Wisconsin–Madison has selected Dr. Nita Ahuja, MD, MBA, to serve as the next Dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the university’s next Vice Chancellor for Medical Affairs. 

Ahuja comes to the University of Wisconsin–Madison from Yale University where she currently serves as the William H. Carmalt Professor of Surgery and chair of the Department of Surgery, the first woman to do so in the Department’s history. Ahuja has been a member of Yale’s faculty since 2018 and previously served as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins for 15 years. She is also a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, among several other academic and healthcare societies. 

At Yale University, Ahuja has served as Chair of the Yale Medicine Faculty Practice Plan, Associate Cancer Center Director of Yale Cancer Center’s Surgical Services, Chief of Surgery at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH), and Surgeon-in-Chief for the Yale New Haven Health System, where she oversaw 85 operating rooms across seven hospitals. 

Ahuja has deep experience working in cancer care and research with a passion for interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to medicine. She specializes in the treatment of sarcomas and complex gastrointestinal cancers and pioneering innovative surgical and heated chemotherapy approaches. Since 2003, she has led a translational science laboratory focused on the development of biomarkers for early detection of pancreatic and colorectal cancers using genetic information from patient samples.

Ahuja received her medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1993 and completed her residency in general surgery and fellowship in surgical oncology at Johns Hopkins. 

Ariannah Mirick, John Muckle, and Jamie Sands led this search with Jane McInerney and Lily Sethares.